


Under the Olive Tree (tell me you love me and rest our broken souls)

by jacenbren



Series: Jason’s MCSM collection [8]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blood and Injury, Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Character Death, Period-Typical Racism, Rare Pairings, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Suicide Attempt, Time Skips, World War I, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 7,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacenbren/pseuds/jacenbren
Summary: Long ago, there were two men.Out of jealousy they fought each other, unable to comprehend their true feelings, and as punishment the goddess Aphrodite cursed them with immortality.It’s going to be a long wait.
Relationships: Aiden/Lukas
Series: Jason’s MCSM collection [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1831039
Kudos: 15





	1. 603 BCE

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw a prompt for this and I actually ended up going on a hyperfixation streak which resulted in this dumpster fire of a fic but I’m actually kinda proud of it  
> Hope you enjoy this

“How. Dare. You.”

Loukas scowled down at Alekos, who was standing at the base of the olive tree he was sitting in, reading one of his father’s scrolls he’d smuggled out of the Athenian palace. 

He wasn’t in the mood for this. 

“Why’d you do this?” Alekos snapped, cold fury and sadness in his eyes. “I told you to stay away from Maia!”

“Oh,  _ that’s  _ why you’re here,” Loukas muttered, rolling his scroll back up and shoving it jerkily into the waistcord of his chiton. “What’s your problem?”

“What’s  _ my _ problem?” Alekos blurted, laughing bitterly. “What’s my problem with  _ you, _ the prince Athens, kissing the girl that your best friend who’s only a simple commoner is about to marry?”

Loukas gritted his teeth. 

He didn’t want to tell Alekos  _ why _ he’d kissed Maia, the slender young woman with curly brown hair and beautiful blue eyes whom his friend was marrying. 

So he decided to be defensive.

“You’re right,” he snapped, wanting to take back his words as soon as they left his mouth. “I’m the prince of Athens, and you’re just a commoner. That means I can do whatever in Hades I want.”

Alekos growled furiously. 

“Get out of that tree,” he hissed, tears welling in his eyes. “So I can kill you.”

Loukas slid out of the tree.

Alekos drew his sword and rushed him head-on, and Loukas drew his own blade to meet him. 

And they fought, blades clashing, punches thrown, insults exchanged.

Finally, since they’d trained to fight together since they were young and were very equally matched, they ended up in a bleeding heap of limbs on the hillside under the olive tree, trying to catch their breath. 

“Get off!” Alekos spat through a bloody nose, attempting a punch that Loukas blocked and shoved away. 

He gritted his teeth against the stinging pain of the shallow cut on his ribs. 

“Wonderful show, boys.”

Loukas yelped in alarm, and Alekos toppled backwards. 

In the olive tree where he’d been sitting earlier, Loukas saw a woman. She was so beautiful she was otherworldly, with long, curly brown hair cascading down her shoulders and pale green eyes that shone like the sun. The chiton wrapped around her body barely concealed her tanned skin and her curvy, voluptuous form, definitely that of a princess who could afford not to exercise or work. 

And she was more gorgeous than any woman Loukas had seen in his life.

He felt his mouth fall open in shock. 

“Wh—who—“ he started to stammer, but the beautiful woman in the olive tree just laughed waving a hand. 

“Oh, you two,” she murmured, gazing down at them fondly. “I am Aphrodite, and I’ve been watching you boys for quite some time. Needless to say, I’m rather disappointed in both of you.”

“Oh, because he kissed my fiancée?” Alekos snapped, standing abruptly. 

Loukas was still too transfixed by Aphrodite’s beauty that he didn’t respond. It wasn’t hard to believe that this woman was the goddess of love. 

Aphrodite shook her head. 

“At this rate, you won’t realize what you’re meant to be before you die after a long, unfulfilled life,” she sighed sadly, pouting. “Alekos, can you not see why Loukas kissed your betrothed?”

Loukas froze. 

“Uh… he’s being an asshole because he likes her?” Alekos stammered, fear mingling on his face alongside his anger. 

Aphrodite frowned. 

Loukas gulped. 

He’d heard of people facing the wrath of the gods before, and Aphrodite was notoriously…  _ difficult _ at times. 

This wouldn’t end well. 

“Since you two are too blind to see it yourselves just yet,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, “I am giving you time to consider it. Much more time. From this day onward, until you sort this out, you will be immortal.”

“What—“ Loukas started to protest. 

Suddenly he jerked awake, gasping for breath, and he realized he was leaning against the olive tree. 

Alekos was lying next to him.

Then the other man sat bolt-upright, green eyes wide with shock. 

“What the Hades just happened?” He blurted, looking a bit rattled as he jumped back to his feet. 

Loukas shrugged. 

Personally, he had no idea. Maybe Aphrodite had been some sort of exhaustion-induced hallucination.

Maybe they weren’t  _ really _ immortal now. 

“I gotta get home,” Alekos blurted, frantically jamming his sword back into its sheath. “We’ll fight later.”

He hurried off, leaving Loukas sitting there under the olive tree. 


	2. 146 BCE (457 years later)

Corinth had fallen. 

Alekos knew he was immortal now, ever since he’d outlived his wife and his children and his grandchildren and  _ their _ grandchildren, and he’d stayed in Athens for more than four hundred years now. 

And Corinth was gone, ravaged by the steadily rising Roman Empire. 

The battle was still raging, but the Greeks were hopelessly outnumbered and outmatched, caught off guard by the attack, given the Romans had struck in the dead of night. 

Alekos ducked between two buildings, shaking with pain and exhaustion. 

He choked back a sob. 

Sure he was immortal, but he could still feel pain, break bones, bleed out and starve, all sorts of things. 

He would just heal, slowly and painfully. 

And he was determined to make a final stand here for the city he’d lived in for the past two centuries.

Just then, a Roman soldier rushed by, his armor clacking as he chased after a bedraggled-looking Greek warrior who was clearly dead on his feet. 

Alekos growled. 

He lunged out of his hiding spot with his sword at ready and body-slammed the Roman, and then drove his sword into the man’s gut, right between that chink in his armor near his belt. 

“Oh, for Jupiter’s sake!” The Roman snarled, glaring down at the blade in his stomach. “This was a new tunic!”

Alekos froze. 

“L—Loukas?” He blurted.

With the combination of the darkness of the night and the helmet, Alekos hadn’t recognized him. 

But the Roman froze and slowly removed his helmet. 

Alekos almost sobbed when he saw that familiar shock of bright blond hair and those ocean-blue eyes. 

“Loukas!” He gasped. “Oh my gods! It’s you! Where have you been?”

Loukas scowled. 

“I joined the Roman Empire two… no, a hundred years ago,” he said. “I decided I’d rather be the one killing instead of the one being killed.”

“But you can’t die,” Alekos retorted, shrinking back. “Neither of us can.”

Loukas heaved a sigh. 

“I didn’t want to be enslaved, okay?” He said, his voice cracking with grief. “I did this out of self preservation. Alekos, come with me, you don’t have to be captured and tortured like the rest of you Greeks will. I can get a word in with the Emperor and he can pardon you.”

_ You Greeks. _

Alekos felt something in his chest crumple at those words. Loukas didn’t even think of himself as Greek anymore, and it made him feel sick.

Betrayed. 

Like when he’d found out that Loukas had been kissing Maia behind his back. 

“No,” Alekos snarled, shaking. “Get away from me. I’d rather be dead than come with you. I don’t ever want to see you again, Loukas.”

Loukas faltered.

“Alekos,” he choked. “Alekos, please, it’s for your own good—“

“Get away from me!” Alekos screamed, his eyes blinded by tears of rage and grief as he furiously plunged his sword into Loukas’s throat. 


	3. 822 AD (968 years later)

Loukas took a deep breath to calm himself, curling up further in the cellar. 

His whole body hurt. 

The warlord’s army had invaded his home, this small coastal town in Scandinavia today, and he’d hidden in a wine cellar with a small girl, barely six years old, whom he’d stumbled across. 

Loukas hugged the little girl who’d latched onto him as soon as he’d picked her up and ran away from the battle.

She was crying, her dress torn and soaked and muddy, her once beautiful and fair blonde hair matted and dirty and disheveled as she clung to him. 

“Mama,” she sobbed. “Papa.”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Loukas mumbled, slipping off his cloak and shivering at the winter chill as he wrapped it around the little girl. “We just need to be quiet and wait and your Mama and Papa will come to look for you. It’s gonna be okay.”

The little girl sniffled and buried her face in his chest, her tiny, fragile body shaking from fear and the cold. 

Loukas blinked back tears. 

The shouts and screams and clanging of metal were getting painfully close. 

He’d lied to this little girl. 

Hiding down here had only prolonged the inevitable, and he knew it. 

And sure enough, the cellar door opened, and boots loudly clumped down the wooden stairs. 

Loukas ducked behind a barrel of wine, covering the little girl’s mouth to keep her from crying out in terror as the man dressed in furs and armor trudged into the cellar, glancing around. 

Then he turned around, and Loukas got a clear look at the barbarian’s face. 

He resisted the urge to scream. 

Alekos glanced around again, grinning fiercely. He looked just like Loukas remembered, except he had a scar on his eyebrow and he wasn’t clean-shaven anymore, an unruly beard on his face. 

Then Loukas accidentally scuffed the floor with his foot as he tried to crouch lower with the little girl.

Alekos whipped around. 

“Found you,” he called, his voice dripping with malice as he shoved the barrel aside. 

His eyes went wide. 

“What the Helheim?”

The little girl wailed in terror, clinging to Loukas’s tunic as Alekos’s eyes narrowed with fury. 

“A—Alekos,” Loukas stammered. “What did they do to you?”

“Nothing,” Alekos snarled. “They love me here. I don’t know if Aphrodite’s playing some kind of cruel joke on me, but I can’t believe this.”

“Alekos, please,” Loukas mumbled, his fingers numb with cold and he hugged the little girl. “Spare the kid. You can take me and hurt me all you want, but don’t hurt the kid. Please.”

Alekos hesitated. 

“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll make them raise the girl with the Foundlings.”

Loukas let out a heavy sigh of relief as Alekos took the sobbing girl under his cloak, his cold expression softening the slightest bit. 

Then Alekos glanced back at him. 

“As for you,” he snarled, “You’re not getting off so easily, you bastard.”

Loukas closed his eyes.

He waited for Alekos to stab him, to cut him open and leave him here in horrible pain, slowly healing in his own filth over the course of several days, weeks even. 

But Alekos roughly dragged him out of the cellar and threw him in the dirt with the other panicked citizens instead. 

Loukas was startled by that. 

He didn’t give the barbarians the satisfaction of begging for mercy as they loaded him onto one of their boats. 

He didn’t scream or cry or plead for his life when he was sold off as a slave to another fleet a few days later, or when he was forced to row the boat even when he dislocated an arm or when three of the female warriors ganged up on him one night and forced him to take off his clothes and sleep with them. 

All he could think about was how Alekos hadn’t been able to bring himself to wound him horribly like the last time they’d met and leave him alone to suffer as he slowly healed.

That would’ve been infinitely worse than his current situation. 

And as much as he hated to admit it, he actually  _ missed _ Alekos as the years started to wear on again.

Alekos understood how much it hurt.


	4. 1346 AD (524 years later)

Alekos really had to get out of Europe. 

Four years ago, this plague had started and had swept across the continent like a wildfire, and he couldn’t do anything to help the people or stop it. 

Now, as he sat alone in his tiny cottage, reading a book he’d stolen from an empty monastery, he felt exhausted. 

Depressed. 

Dead bodies littered the streets, covered in horrible sores and pustules from the plague they called the Black Death, and there just wasn’t anyone willing to risk the sickness by moving the bodies. 

And Alekos couldn’t catch it. 

He wondered where Loukas was right now; how he was doing. 

He hated Aphrodite’s curse. 

Alekos dragged himself out of his chair to the window so he could fill his cup with tea, and he winced. 

In the street, an elderly man staggered along, pus oozing from the sores all over his face and body. Then he tripped over a half-decomposed corpse and fell flat on his face and didn’t get back up. 

Alekos swallowed hard. 

That man had just died. He could feel it deep in his bones as a figure cloaked in black darted out of an alley. 

Then they started rifling through the dead man’s pockets. 

“Hey!” Alekos blurted. 

He shoved open his door, white-hot rage seething inside him. The audacity that person had, to disrespect the dead—

He froze in his tracks. 

That blond hair, that haggard face, he remembered it. A little more than five hundred years ago, in the wine cellar—

“Get back!” Loukas snarled brokenly, a wild, desperate look in his eyes as he yanked a knife out of his old, ragged coat. “Get away! I’ll stab—“

Then he froze, recognition flickering across his face. 

“Alekos?” He mumbled weakly, his gaze unfocused and exhausted. “Is… is that you? You shaved… you shaved your beard off.”

He wobbled and almost fell down, breathing heavily as he tried to stand. 

Alekos winced. 

Loukas was clearly in a lot of pain, and he was shivering in the summer heat. 

“Inside,” Alekos snapped, clenching his teeth in irritation and regret as he dragged Loukas into his cottage. “You need to sit and rest.”

———

As it turned out, Loukas was barely walking, given that he had several infected knife wounds on his torso that hadn’t healed up yet. 

His constant moving was obviously slowing the process down, Alekos thought to himself, carefully washing away the dirt with some water from the well in his backyard that he’d boiled for tea and wrapping them in clean cloth. 

Loukas practically moaned in relief. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled, barely a heartbeat from sinking into delirium as Alekos carefully spoon-fed him some warm broth. “Thank you thank you thank you Alekos thank you.”

Alekos clenched his teeth. 

“Don’t mention it,” he muttered, wincing again at the sight of Loukas’s concave stomach and protruding ribs. 

He’d obviously been giving others his food since starvation wouldn’t kill him. 

It went on like that for several days as Loukas slowly recovered from his wounds and his malnourishment. 

Finally, four months later, he was healthy and packing his things to leave. 

“Goodbye,” Alekos said stiffly, watching Loukas’s retreating form. “I hope everything stays well for you.”

Somehow, he missed him already.


	5. 1775 AD (429 years later)

He’d decided the spelling of his name was too strange for these times, and so he was writing it as Lukas. 

Lukas didn’t mind that. 

It wasn’t like the pronunciation was any different, but the change still took a while to get used to. 

He’d started chanting the new spelling like a mantra whenever he got stressed, to calm himself down and regain focus when things were going bad. 

“L-u-k-a-s,” he mumbled to himself as he reloaded his rifle. “Lukas.”

He could hear the British forces closing in. They’d managed to fight back the first few waves, but reinforcements had arrived and now the rebels were being forced to retreat. 

Suddenly a cannon went off. 

Lukas yelped and threw himself to the ground, shaking in terror as dirt and debris rained down on him. 

“L-u-k-a-s,” he mumbled. “L-u-k-a-s. L-u-k-a-s. L-u-k-a-s.”

“Lukas!” Somebody shouted. “We’re retreating! There’s too many of them, pal, we need to move!”

Lukas groaned and rolled over.

Standing over him was Jesse, one of his friends here, breathing hard, his dark green eyes wide with fear. 

Jesse’s parents had been slaves from the Caribbean, but they’d managed to buy their son’s freedom and send him to America, where Lukas had met him at an anti-taxation rally. 

Ever since, they’d been close. 

Closer than a lot of their superiors would’ve approved of, given that a) the kisses they’d shared would’ve most likely gotten them charged with sodomy if anyone had seen them, and b) Jesse’s dark complexion made him a target of prejudice here in Boston.

And now they were trying to hold off the British at Bunker Hill, and things were not going as planned. 

“We gotta move!” Jesse yelled. 

Lukas grimaced, hauling himself out of the dirt. His ankle throbbed. 

“Shit,” he hissed. “My ankle’s busted.”

“C’mon,” Jesse said hurriedly, “Lean on me, we’ll get out of this. Don’t wor—“

Then, with a sickening  _ thunk, _ an enemy bayonet suddenly thrust out of his stomach, the blade drenched in blood and gore.

Time seemed to slow down. 

Jesse’s eyes went wide with shock as he crumpled to his knees, coughing violently and spewing blood. 

Lukas screamed in horror. 

And there, holding the lethal bayonet, dressed in a red British jacket with a new scar on his left cheek… 

“NO!” Lukas howled. 

He’d outlived so many friends and lovers, but he’d never lost one like this. 

Alekos stared at him in horror. 

“Loukas?”

“Goddamn it!” Lukas screamed, crumpling next to Jesse. “No no no no no! Jesse wake up! It’s me!”

But he was too late. 

Much too late.

Jesse’s breathing was shallow and irregular, his eyes wide and clouded over as blood poured out of the ragged hole in his gut, forming a puddle under him. 

And Lukas knew that when a pool of blood became a certain size there was nothing he could do. 

“L—L—“ Jesse stammered hoarsely. 

His bloody hand reached up and cupped Lukas’s cheek for a fraction of a second before it fell next to him in the dirt. 

“Jesse!” Lukas choked out, shaking with rage and grief. 

Jesse’s chest had gone still, his eyes dull and empty, blood sluggishly oozing down his chin and into the dirt. 

And Lukas began to sob, clutching Jesse’s hand and burying his face in his ruined shirt, mumbling and begging and pleading for a miracle. 

_ It should’ve been me, _ Lukas thought. 

_ I should’ve been stabbed I would’ve survived this is my fault Jesse’s dead because he stopped to help me walk he should’ve ran because I would’ve survived the Brits this is all my fault _

“Oh my god,” a voice broke through his delirium. “Oh, oh no, Loukas, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you—“

Lukas screamed. 

He hurled himself at Alekos and punched him hard in the face, his vision blurring red with tears and blood and rage as he punched him over and over. 

“LUKAS!” He shrieked. “My name is Lukas now! L-U-K-A-S!”

Alekos snarled and slammed the butt of his rifle into Lukas’s jaw so hard something broke. 

Lukas howled in pain.

“I’m sorry!” Alekos yelled, his face a mess of blood and tears. “I thought he was just another Yankee!”

Lukas felt something in his chest break. 

_ “I’m _ just another Yankee!” He wailed, ripping the bayonet off his rifle. “We’re all just Yankees for you to kill!”

He plunged the bayonet between Alekos’s ribs, making him cry out. 

“Y—you know—“ Alekos gasped, ripping the blade out of his chest, “That neither of us can die, Lukas.”

“Well I can try,” Lukas sobbed.

Jesse, the only lover he’d had over the years whom he’d  _ really _ felt connected to, whom he genuinely wished he could remove the curse so he could stay, was dead, and Alekos was against him. 

Alekos had _killed_ Jesse. 

Lukas had never wished he could die more in his long life. 

And before Alekos could do anything, he stabbed himself in the gut, the pain so intense he nearly blacked out. 

But he did it again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Until finally Alekos wrestled the bayonet out of his hands and hurled it away, wrenching him into a hug. 

“Stop it,” he spat. “Stop. There’s nothing we can do anymore. You can’t die.”

And Lukas broke down. 

He was taken captive by the Brits eventually, but he didn’t protest. 

He wanted to tear Aphrodite limb from limb because of this horrible turn of events, and he just wanted it all to end. 


	6. 1869 AD (94 years later)

Alekos frowned. 

He needed to change his name.

Almost a hundred years ago, he’d killed a man in battle, and Lukas had tried so hard to end his own life, even though it literally wasn’t possible, and Lukas’s wild, heartbroken snarl and the smear of the other man’s blood on his cheek was seared into Alekos’s mind forever. 

And he was trying to change. 

He wanted to distance himself from the person he’d been back then, a man who’d thrown himself into any war he happened across in hopes of breaking Aphrodite’s curse. 

Alekos flicked through his book. 

Then he found it, nestled on a page where he might’ve skipped over it by accident if he’d been skimming it.

Aiden. 

“Aiden,” he said to himself, trying the name on for size, and the surname he’d picked out back in the sixteen-hundreds. 

“Aiden Mercer.”

———

Two years later, Aiden was driving his tiny wagon across the prairie.

He’d decided on going west, and for now he was liking his decision. Not another human being around for miles, and the slough next to the river he’d decided on settling by was a perfect place for an old soul like him to live a quiet life. 

Currently he was heading into town to trade some of this year’s autumn harvest, his two oxen hooked up to the wagon and their calf trailing behind. 

Then he heard a voice. 

He pulled the reins to make his oxen stop, and peered into the ditch on the side of the road where a gulley had formed. 

He winced. 

There was a wagon down there, mostly clear of the mud, a small one like his own, and a person was trying to dig out a heifer, stuck up to her knees. 

The poor animal mooed loudly. 

Aiden heaved a sigh. 

He grabbed his shovel, took off his shoes, and slid down into the gulley.

“You look like you need help,” he remarked, tapping the stranger on the shoulder. “I have an extra shovel.”

“Thanks,” the man sighed in relief, turning and smearing some of the mud off his face. “You’re a lifesaver. Chocolate Chip here got spooked by a snake and ran off the—“

Oh no. 

“Damn you, Aphrodite!” Aiden hissed under his breath as Lukas stared at him in shock for a few seconds. 

“You,” he mumbled. 

“Look,” Aiden snapped, bitter guilt welling up as he remembered the dark-skinned man he’d killed. “I’m sorry about the past. Do you want help?”

Lukas narrowed his eyes. 

“Yeah,” he said coldly. “Help me dig Chocolate Chip out. I can’t change what you did to Jesse.”

They worked in silence. 

Once the heifer was free, Aiden climbed back into his wagon. 

He was about to set off when Lukas ran into his path, blocking the way. 

“Hey!” He snapped. “We need to talk!”

Aiden cringed. 

“What do you want?” He snapped. 

Lukas made a face. 

“I wanna tell you I’m sorry,” he snapped, bitterness visible in his eyes. “I’m sorry that I kissed Maia.”

Aiden hesitated. 

The memories were muddled, but he could dimly recall the woman’s face. 

His fiancée. 

Lukas had kissed her. 

“And I know you wouldn’t’ve killed Jesse if you knew what he meant to me,” Lukas continued, sounding bitter. “I don’t forgive you but I understand.”

With that, he stalked away. 

Aiden watched him go.

He felt a bit surprised. 

“Wait,” he called as Lukas climbed back into his wagon. 

Lukas paused, frowning at him. 

“I want you to know my new name,” Aiden shouted. “It’s Aiden.”

Lukas nodded. 

Then his wagon pulled away, leaving Aiden sitting there in his. 

One of his oxen grunted. 

Aiden wasn’t sure how to process this meeting, but it hadn’t gone terribly. 

But he sort of understood a little of what Aphrodite had meant: He and Lukas had to do something to break the curse, but neither of them knew what. 

Maybe they’d never know.


	7. 1916 AD (45 years later)

Lukas hated the trenches. 

It was cold, dark, and reminded him too much of Bunker Hill, and everything was wet and filthy and disgusting. 

Lice, disease, and trench foot ran rampant among the soldiers. 

And this Great War, as they called it, the War To End All Wars, felt like it was dragging on forever even though it had started two years ago. 

Lukas had been drafted and shipped out to France three months ago. 

Now he was sitting on a chunk of dirt, playing blackjack with a couple of his fellow soldiers in the light of a candle. 

Axel, a heavyset guy from New York with thick black hair that was always unkempt, passed him a bottle of whiskey. “You want some?”

Lukas chuckled. “Thanks man,” he said. 

Gilbert (whom they called Gill), a dark-haired man with a scruffy goatee who hailed from a town here in France, took a long drag on his cigar. 

“You think we’ll be home by Christmas this year?” He asked. 

Lukas’s mouth twitched. 

He’d been in enough wars over his long, long life to know that this one was going to take a while to end. 

“Nah,” he sighed. “Don’t think so.”

“I miss New York,” Axel remarked, stretching his arms above his head and yawning loudly. “The missus sent me a letter the other day. She gave birth a few weeks ago. Now I’ve gotta little baby girl waitin’ for me back home.”

Gill laughed. “If we ever get out of this shitheap, I’d love to meet her.”

Lukas chuckled along with him. 

It had been easy for him to get drawn into this, a healthy young man who looked to be about twenty. 

Axel was in his thirties and had a kid already, and he liked to talk about his wife Olivia and his four-year-old son, especially after an attack. 

Gill, on the other hand, who was about Lukas’s age, liked to joke in French when under pressure. 

Obviously those were both coping mechanisms. 

But Lukas didn’t judge them for it. They were both so young, so naïve, and they’d never been through a war like this. 

Then an alarm bell started to ring. 

Gill froze, and Axel’s face paled in alarm as shots rang out and screams followed. 

Wordlessly the three of them abandoned their game and rushed out into the trench, and they’d just started firing over the edge at the German side when Lukas heard the haunting cry. 

_ “MUSTARD GAS!” _

Death rattles and gunfire rose up, and all three of them broke into a sprint down the trench, trying to get as far away from the screaming as possible. 

Lukas could already smell the gas behind them, blown by the wind—

Then his boot caught on the edge of one of the boards that had been laid across the bottom of the trench to keep them from having to wade through water. 

Lukas hit the ground so hard that pain exploded through his nose. 

Gasping, he lifted his head and immediately got a lungful of mustard gas that made his throat scream. 

He howled in pain. 

Then he saw a figure staggering towards him through the yellowy fog. 

_ No no no no no _

_ Not again _

It was Gill, a cloth clamped over his mouth and nose as he tried to run into the fog towards him. 

“No!” Lukas rasped. “Run!”

Gill was trying to rescue him because he didn’t know Lukas couldn’t be killed. 

Gill was going to die.

He made it three more steps before he collapsed, choking up bile and wheezing, his eyes red and streaming. 

Lukas dragged himself towards him. 

Gill was twitching, whining in pain, still convulsing and retching. 

His skin was already blistering. 

Lukas choked back a sob as he collapsed next to Gill, clinging to the man for what felt like hours as the gas dispersed, trying to shield him from it. 

But by the time the medics found them, Gill was as dead as dead could be. 

———

Axel was somber and quiet when they reunited. 

“I was with him,” Lukas mumbled, shivering against the freezing wind. “He died in my arms. He was too far gone for the gas mask I found to do any good.”

Axel nodded glumly. 

“I thought he had a chance,” he muttered, reloading his rifle. 

In the next attack, Lukas and Axel were sent on offensive, and it went wrong almost as soon as they left the trench. 

Lukas was running. 

He was running for the other side, bullets flying past him when Axel got caught in the barbed wire and tripped. 

“Axel!” He shouted. 

“I’m coming!” Axel shouted, struggling back to his feet. “I just tripped—“

There was a gunshot that sounded louder than the rest and Axel fell sideways into the muck, still tangled in the barbed wire as a cloud of red sprayed into the air, his eyes empty with death before he hit the ground with a shocked expression on his face. 

Lukas gritted his teeth. 

He knew full well he’d outlive any friends he made, but losing them like this… 

Axel had had a wife and children. 

And then Lukas tripped over a corpse and fell into a ditch full of mud and stagnant water.

Cursing, he started to struggle out—

“Oh my god.”

Lukas whirled around in surprise, and he gasped in shock. 

Huddled against the side of the ditch was none other than  _ Aiden, _ dressed in British army fatigues and clutching his thigh, where a bullet wound was oozing blood down his leg. 

“They think I’m dead,” Aiden gasped, grimacing, his voice tight with pain. 

Lukas was suddenly thrown back to Greece, fighting Aiden under the olive tree out of jealousy. 

But he’d been jealous of  _ Maia, _ not him. 

“You need somebody to wait with until the medics do another sweep?” Lukas found himself asking, hoping for a distraction from the fact that he’d watched both his friends die. 

Aiden’s eyebrows arched in surprise. 

But he nodded. “Got any good stories to pass the time? Gunfire gets boring.”

And so they sat in the ditch swapping stories from all the time they’d been apart, late into the night until the medics finally arrived (luckily the Germans didn’t shoot them).

“And so I punched the crocodile,” Aiden said, grinning toothily, “and all the swanky British aristocrats go wild!”

Lukas cackled. 

“I can’t believe you wrestled a crocodile back in 1823,” he snorted. “You are so dumb, you know. Idiot.”

Aiden scoffed. “Right.”

Their eyes met for a moment too long. 

“Uh, so do you have any more good stories?” Lukas squeaked awkwardly, trying to break the quiet. “I mean, I got stuck at the bottom of a well for a while back in the 200s because everybody thought it was enchanted when they heard me yelling.”

Aiden was about to respond when the medics arrived. 

And as they carried him away on a stretcher (grumbling about how he felt fine), Lukas felt conflicted. 

He didn’t hate Aiden anymore. 

If anything, the feelings from oh so long ago were coming back. 

And he didn’t know what to do. 


	8. 1931 AD (15 years later)

Prohibition was stupid. 

Aiden had hated it ever since the bill was passed, and now, since he was working in a sleazy little speakeasy in the worst neighborhoods in New York, he was breaking American law. 

Not that he particularly cared, but he’d have to explain a lot if he got sent to prison and didn’t age at all. 

He’d been working here in this speakeasy as a bartender for a few years now, and he’d developed a keen eye for picking out undercover police officers and other people of the like. 

And then a familiar face strode through the door, and he almost dropped the cup he was washing. 

It was Lukas, dressed smartly and glancing around warily as he headed in. 

Then their eyes met. 

“Haven’t seen you since ‘16,” Aiden remarked as Lukas walked up and leaned against the bar. 

Lukas smiled thinly. “How long?”

“Fifteen years since we last talked to each other, yeah,” Aiden replied, squinting at Lukas’s nice suit and even nicer shoes. “You with the cops?”

Lukas chuckled. “Undercover. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna report this place now that I know you work here. Can I get a glass of wine? Preferably red?”

Aiden relaxed. 

He hadn’t been expecting to run into Lukas again for a while, but somehow this was a pleasant surprise. 

Maybe that was the beers he’d had before going on the clock talking. 

But he filled a wine glass for Lukas. 

Lukas sipped his drink slowly, taking his hat off and setting it on the counter. 

Aiden couldn’t help staring. 

With all the mud from the trenches, he hadn’t gotten to appreciate how attractive Lukas was, what with that silky blond hair that was neatly maintained and his calloused hands and those blue eyes and the countless tiny scars on his face and forearms when he slipped his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. 

“You planning on staying?” Aiden asked, topping off Lukas’s glass. “Don’t worry, that one’s on me.”

Lukas laughed, his smile radiant in the dim light of the smoky speakeasy. 

“Sure,” he murmured. 

They kept swapping stories over cigars and alcohol until neither of them could think straight, and then somehow Aiden found himself in the janitor’s closet pinning Lukas against the door, kissing him over and over and pulling his dress shirt open. 

“Oh my god,” Lukas moaned, grinding frenetically against his thigh. “Oh my god, Aiden, Aiden Aiden…”

“Hmm?” Aiden murmured, gasping as Lukas’s hands slipped under the waistband of his trousers. “Yeah? Do you like this, baby?”

He didn’t know if it was the heavy dose of alcohol-induced euphoria or something else, but he never wanted this moment to end, he never wanted Lukas to pull away and leave. 

He loved it too much; the taste of smoke and liquor on Lukas’s tongue, his hands on his body, everything. 

But then suddenly Lukas jerked away, eyes wide with shock. 

“Oh my god,” he mumbled frantically, staggering back. “We should  _ not _ have done that. I… I gotta go.”

And before Aiden could protest, he was gone, running out of the janitor’s closet and fleeing the speakeasy like he’d just been committing arson instead of kissing another man. 

Well, both of those things could potentially get him arrested, but still. 

“Wait!” Aiden yelped.

But he was much too late.

Lukas had fled into the night, and the two of them probably wouldn’t see each other again for a long, long time.


	9. 1942 AD (11 years later)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m putting a smut warning on this chapter for a reason

Upon fleeing to Europe after the speakeasy incident to avoid any confrontation afterwards, Lukas found himself caught up in a new war.

But on the wrong side. 

He’d headed to Germany, where the economy was picking up again after the Great Depression, and things had been good for a while. 

Until Adolf Hitler had been elected chancellor, and things had gone steadily downhill ever since. Discrimination against the Jewish, unrest everywhere, and then  _ another world war _ had started. 

The War To End All Wars hadn’t  _ really _ ended all wars, after all. 

And Lukas had his own problems. 

He, a strong and healthy young man with cool blue eyes and golden hair (the poster boy for the Aryan race, which was a _complete_ fabrication and utter bullshit), had been shoehorned into the military as soon as the government had been able, and he had no choice but to follow orders or get executed for treason. It was safe to say Lukas had been in a terrible mood for the past ten years.

And Lukas was back in France, trying to track down some British soldiers. 

Where he’d fought in the trenches twenty-four years ago, which brought back rather unwanted memories. 

And he’d been separated from his patrol a couple hours ago for that matter, and he was hopelessly lost in the woods with no flares to use to call for help.

“Stupid,” Lukas growled, yanking off his helmet and hurling it aside. “Stupid!”

He immediately regretted it as the damn thing went flying down a slope and into a ditch, far out of his reach. 

Spitting curses, he climbed down after it. 

And then he saw the old, likely abandoned barn ahead of him. 

It was getting dark, he realized. At least he could bed down for the night there, maybe try and light a signal fire. 

He cautiously entered the barn. 

It was just as abandoned as he’d expected. Grinning to himself, Lukas trotted over to the forgotten, dried-out bales of hay in the corner. 

That would make a good fire starter—

Someone tackled him and sent him sprawling to the floor. 

“Ow!” Lukas snarled, wriggling in his attacker’s grip and attempting to throw them off. “Get off! Fuck! Ow!”

His assailant abruptly slammed him on his back in the hay. 

And then, in the low light of dusk, Lukas recognized his attacker, dressed in British army fatigues and looking rather battered and exhausted, twigs and hay sticking out of his disheveled hair. 

Aiden’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. 

“You’re a fucking  _ Nazi _ now?” 

“I didn’t have a choice!” Lukas spluttered, trying to get free. “They forced me into the military! I’m, like, the poster boy for whatever superior race they made up for propaganda, damn it!”

“There’s  _ always _ a choice!” Aiden spat. 

“Oh, like when you  _ chose _ to kill Jesse in front of me?” Lukas snarled, wrenching free of Aiden’s grip and shoving him into the hay. “Like when you  _ chose _ to stick your tongue down my throat back in the speakeasy?”

Aiden faltered. 

Lukas found himself seething with anger, looming over him furiously. 

He wanted to scream. 

Aiden snarled furiously and launched himself at him, and then they were wrestling around in the hay like children, although their intentions were decidedly less innocent. 

“Why did you run?” Aiden hissed. “Why did you run away after?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Lukas shouted. 

He suddenly found himself remembering in vivid detail what those hot, alcohol-induced kisses had felt like, and then it popped into his head. 

He wanted more. 

And so he grabbed Aiden by the hair, pinned him on his back in the hay, and kissed him hard.

Aiden hesitated, obviously caught off guard, but returned it with fervor. 

It seemed like barely seconds had passed before they were struggling out of their uniforms and frantically touching and feeling and memorizing each other’s bodies, and Lukas didn’t care that they were both dirty and that they were literally in a barn. 

All that mattered was that Aiden’s sweaty, well-muscled body was pinning him to the ground and Lukas wanted to scream from how good it felt when Aiden pulled his undershorts down. 

“Oh my gods,” he moaned, a phrase ingrained in his head thousands of years ago slipping out. “God, Aiden,  _ fuck!” _

Aiden growled.

“Want your hands,” he panted, “On me, baby. Put your hands on me.”

And Lukas complied, watching Aiden moan and fall apart under his hands, and then Aiden returned the favor except with his mouth instead. 

Finally the two of them were shaking and clinging to each other in a cooling pile of sticky, sweaty limbs, alone in the dark. 

Somehow they fell asleep like that. 

———

The next day, Lukas set up a signal fire, and sure enough the rest of his division had gone looking for him. 

And they took Aiden prisoner. 

Aiden was startlingly quiet the whole time, and he seemed stiff and awkward. 

“Relax,” Lukas said to him, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “They won’t do anything too horrible to you.”

Aiden frowned.

But he shrugged and let the soldiers lead him away to a transport truck. 

_ “Hey, Lukas!” _ One of Lukas’s squad members suddenly shouted to him.  _ “Wohin warst du?” _

Lukas sighed. 

_ “Ich habe mich verlaufen,” _ he sighed, rubbing his face.  _ “Und ich fand hier draußen einen der Briten. Ich habe die Nacht in dieser Scheune verbracht. Es war echt kalt gestern Abend.” _

His buddies laughed and slapped him on the back as they headed back. 

Lukas knew he couldn’t tell anyone what had actually happened between them, partially because no one would believe him if he said he was immortal. 

  
Oh, and the whole  _ homosexual _ thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My German isn’t the best but I tried


	10. 1988 AD (46 years later)

After going back to being a bartender in the sixties, Aiden had been thinking. 

He’d been alive so long. 

But he’d never expected what had happened in the French barn (he’d started calling that the Barn Fiasco) to occur. 

But it had felt  _ good. _

And Aiden missed Lukas considerably, and his feelings towards the man had become a little less confusing when he’d finally compared them to those he’d had for his long-dead fiancée. 

Although admitting it felt terrible after all these years, he knew he was in love. 

And he’d come to terms with more about himself after he’d discovered there was a word for it, and now he was bartending and a little hole-in-the-wall place in Chicago, a gay bar that was often empty which was just fine. 

Now (at least to the patrons and the few friends he’d made), Aiden was openly bisexual, but if anyone asked about his relationship status, he always said that it was complicated. 

He hadn’t seen Lukas in 46 years. 

But then, that night, at around ten, the door opened and one of the regulars, a skinny nineteen-year-old kid whom everyone had affectionately nicknamed Radar skipped in, his taped-up glasses sitting askew on his nose, which meant he was too excited to bother fixing them. 

And he was tugging someone along behind him by the arm. 

Aiden almost dropped his dish rag. 

It was  _ Lukas, _ dressed in a clean white-and-purple striped shirt under a leather jacket and jeans. 

He looked fairly nervous. 

“This is him,” Radar said, bouncing on his heels as he pointed at the bar. “Told you he works here.”

Then their eyes met. 

There was shock visible in Lukas’s eyes as Aiden waved awkwardly. 

“Thanks for the tip kid,” Lukas said hastily, shaking Radar’s hand. “I gotta go and talk to him.”

Without really thinking about it, Aiden reached for a wine glass and a bottle of red, and quickly poured and set the drink on the bar as Lukas slid into a stool. 

It was silent for a moment. 

“Hey,” Lukas said softly, taking the glass with a thin smile. “This for me?”

Aiden nodded. 

“It’s been a while,” he finally mustered up the courage to say. “Since the French Barn Fiasco.”

Lukas seemed to recoil. 

“Didn’t we agree that what happened in that barn  _ stays _ in that barn?” He muttered, reaching for a cigar. “I don’t want that thing to be something we talk about all the time.”

Aiden bristled instinctively. 

“Look, you started it,” he hissed, knotting his dish rag around his hand. “I don’t know why you did it but we need to at least talk about—“

“Because I’m in love with you!”

The bar fell silent as all the patrons turned around to look at them. 

Aiden felt like he was going to die. 

“Come with me,” he blurted, hopping over the bar as easily as he’d fended off a bear in the year 19 AD (god that had been so long ago), and dragged Lukas out the back door into the alley. 

As soon as the door shut, he grabbed Lukas by the hair and kissed him. 

Lukas flinched back. 

“What the hell?” He snapped, a look of contempt on his face. “I just said I’m in love with you and you’re not even gonna acknowledge it?”

“I’m sorry!” Aiden yelped, wincing. “I’m just so confused, okay? I don’t know what’s going on and I keep remembering back in Greece and how this all started so many years ago—“

“I kissed Maia because I was  _ jealous _ of her, damn it!” Lukas spat, tears brimming in his eyes. “I was in love with you but you had a fiancée and I was so young and immature and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do about it, okay? Can you stop toying with my feelings? I don’t know what happened in that barn but I  _ do _ know that it’ll never happen again and I just want to die so I don’t have to keep living forever in pain like this!”

It was quiet for several seconds.

“Lukas,” Aiden mumbled, tears blurring in his eyes as he grabbed his hands and pulled him close, “I’m in love with you too, and I don’t care if we’re going to live until the end of time. All I care about is that I wanna live forever with you.”

And Lukas  _ smiled, _ tears streaming down his face as they threw their arms around each other, still crying as they kissed, slow and soft and sweet. 

“Well done!”

Aiden jumped in alarm, still holding onto Lukas like a lifeline as he hastily wiped the tears off his face. 

There was a woman standing behind them, her hair pale blonde and eyes a beautiful blue, her pale skin accented by her dramatic purple silk dress that seemed to shimmer in the nearby street lights reflecting off the pavement that was still wet from a recent downpour. 

“Aphrodite?” Aiden blurted. 

“You look different,” Lukas mumbled. 

Aphrodite just chuckled. “My appearance changes depending on the ideas of beauty of the place I’m in and the time period,” she explained. “It seems you two finally figured it out, and in turn you’ve broken my spell.”

“More like your curse,” Aiden snapped, suddenly angry. “Do you know how long we’ve been suffering?”

Lukas swatted his arm. 

“What he  _ meant _ is that we’re very grateful that you’re lifting the spell on us,” he said quickly, elbowing Aiden in the gut. “We can’t thank you enough for this, Aphrodite.”

Aiden clenched his jaw. 

He’d stopped caring about the gods a very long time ago. According to him, those bastards needed to take some responsibility for their actions and the suffering they’d caused. 

But Lukas was as respectful and kind as always, and Aiden couldn’t find it in himself to argue. 

“Gratitude is not necessary,” Aphrodite remarked. “Only a simple prayer or offering once you wake. Now, I bid you both farewell, and a happy life.”

———

And then Aiden jerked awake. 

He glanced around in alarm, and then he realized he was wearing a simple linen tunic again. 

He whirled around. 

And there was the olive tree, unchanged from the day they’d fought here, and Lukas was sitting up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. 

The countless scars from countless wars were still visible on his torso.

“Oh my god,” Aiden blurted, and without thinking he staggered forwards and flung his arms around Lukas, kissing him hard on his lips. 

And then Lukas burst into hysterical tears, clinging to him like a child. 

“We’re home!” He sobbed. “Aiden we came home! She sent us back! I love you I love you I love you—“

Aiden blinked, smiling uncontrollably as tears started to run down his face. 

He could still taste the cigar smoke in Lukas’s mouth as they kissed under the olive tree, even though cigars didn’t exist yet and they wouldn’t for a few thousand more years, and the scars on Lukas’s stomach from the bayonet felt rough and strangely comforting under his fingers. 

“Oh my god,” Aiden mumbled, breaking the kiss so he could see Lukas’s face, see his blue eyes and his flushed, scarred cheeks, the melancholia in his gaze. “We lived so long…”

Lukas laughed weakly. “It’s gonna be a pain to live without toilet paper.”

Aiden almost cackled. 

“And vodka,” he giggled, running his fingers through Lukas’s hair. “I’m really gonna miss that, too…”

  
  


_ {end.} _

**Author's Note:**

> If you can’t tell Lukas and Aiden aren’t very Greek names so I switched them out for Loukas and Alekos respectively but eventually as they get closer to modern times their names change back to their canon ones


End file.
